Archbishop Desmond Tutu blesses our Dispossessed campaign

"I love London": Archbishop emeritus of Cape Town Desmond Tutu has lived in the capital

Desmond Tutu, one of the world's greatest champions of the Dispossessed, today gave a powerful blessing to the Standard's campaign to help the poorest in London.

It came as three more of the capital's most distinguished business leaders — British Midland founder Sir Michael Bishop, easyJet entrepreneur Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou and hedge fund boss Crispin Odey — all pledged five-figure personal donations.

In an emotional statement Mr Tutu, the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner who lived and worked in London in the Sixties and Seventies, said he fondly remembered the "generosity" of its people and said the Fund was a way "to do the same for someone else today".

The former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town said the Fund would bring a little of the southern African concept of "ubuntu" — a sense of shared community — to the streets of our capital, a city "I know and love a great deal".

He said: "We are all horrified by the ghastly violence of gang warfare and knife crime; somehow we don't notice the ghastly violence of poverty and bad housing or educational deprivation so easily.

"This initiative will help people in all those circumstances and so it will be a means to making London a better place for us all — those who give and those who receive will all be better off for it — and I don't just mean financially. I mean better off as human beings who enter into an understanding of ubuntu."

As cash continued to pour into the fund, helping it on its way to its target of £1 million, another foreign-born success story who spent formative years in London gave his reasons for backing the campaign.

Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou said: "I am very pleased I was given the opportunity to help some of the neediest people in London. This is the city that I arrived in as a student in 1984 at the LSE. I built most of my businesses from London. Glad to be giving a little something back."

One of the capital's leading financiers Crispin Odey said it was "important" to donate because of its incredible integrated mix of people from all walks of life. He said: "London is a village — it's enjoyable because you feel everybody is part of everything. It's important that if we live together we get on together — and that means helping each other."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu: We're better people by helping others

In Southern Africa we have a special word, "ubuntu"; it is very hard to translate into English.

It means that everyone in a community is dependent on everyone else. If I am happy you are happier, if I am sad you are troubled, if you are in need of help I can assist, if you are poor I can work to relieve your needs.

It is the mark of a truly interdependent society where we learn to recognise that we all belong to God's fantastic family, all, all, all, even the relatives we don't especially find agreeable.

That's why I want to express my support for the Evening Standard's Dispossessed Fund. It is ubuntu, everyone has the chance to help everyone else and so we are all better people as a result.

I live in a marvellous and beautiful country where we can stage the football World Cup and have a fantastic party, and where there are people living in shanty towns and suffering horrible poverty. I fully understand how difficult these great challenges are to resolve.

But I live in a country also where the sheer generosity and goodwill of its people led the way to finding peaceful democracy without a violent revolution; it can be done. It may not yet be a miracle — they are harder to achieve — but it is close to one.

I know and love London a great deal. It was my home for years in adversity, the generosity of its people sustained me with my small family and educated me in such a way that I could apply those lessons to my home country. The Evening Standard's Dispossessed Fund is inviting you, dear readers, to do the same for someone else today.

We are all horrified by the ghastly violence of gang warfare and knife crime; somehow we don't notice the ghastly violence of poverty and bad housing or educational deprivation so easily.

This initiative will help people in all those circumstances and so it will be a means to making London a better place for us all — those who give and those who receive will all be better off for it. And I don't just mean financially. I mean better off as human beings who enter into an understanding of ubuntu.

London can learn from South Africa as well you know. It is already learning a little, the Tutu Foundation UK is a small charity promoting ubuntu through its Conversations For Change programme.

The Evening Standard's initiative is designed to work with small charities in local changes.

In the New Testament there is a famous sermon called The Sermon On The Mount in which Jesus points to all sorts of people as "blessed" — the peacemakers, the poor, the hungry, the seekers after justice and others. I like to think of it not so much as a sermon as a collection of remarks Jesus made whenever he saw people making peace, rich in spirit if poor in possessions, determined to work for justice and so on.

That way it is always there, not just a single event on a mountain top to a congregation. The Sermon On The Mount is ubuntu — loving your neighbour as yourself.

It is a good starting place and a wonderful goal (we know all about goals in South Africa) so I give my blessing to this initiative and hope and pray for all Londoners as they seek to work for London, marvellous that it is, to be an even better place.

God bless you.

The latest big backers of our £1m fund

Sir Stelios Haji-IoannouThe founder of easyJet is an unstoppable force of nature, known to one and all simply as Stelios. Changed the face of the aviation industry by creating easyJet and making it the second biggest airline in Europe. Recently, as the biggest shareholder, he has not been happy with its direction — and, typically, has not been afraid to say so. Aged 43, he lives in Monaco but he spends a lot of his time in London.

Crispin OdeyThere are a few people the City likes to keep permanently on its radar. Odey, the investment manager and founder of Odey Asset Management, is one of them. He's jolly and avuncular, but appearances deceive: Odey is as ruthless a player of the markets as any young City hotshot. A staunch Tory, that hasn't prevented Odey from embarrassing the party by threatening to leave the UK for tax reasons.

Sir Michael BishopSince selling his bmi airline to Lufthansa last year, Sir Michael has not been in any hurry to land another job — though he was linked with the chairmanship of ITV and a host of other senior posts. He's a keen giver to charities, in particular to education (he left school at 16 and started work as a baggage handler) and the arts and to the Australian Royal Flying Doctor Service.